The State Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs, in the 36 states of the federation are creations of the 1999 Constitution. They are among the State Executive Bodies created under Section 197(1).

The others are: The State Civil Service Commission and the State Judicial Service Commission. The Governor is empowered to appoint their officials and governing boards in line with the provisions of the Constitution and subject to the approval of the State House of Assembly.

Since they became part of our democracy in 1999, the SIECs have not been able to cover themselves in glory. All the elections they have conducted have invariably resulted in the wholesale victory of the party of the incumbent Governor.

Indeed, the SIECs are part of the tools the Governors have used to exert a totalitarian hold on their states. They simply use the elections that the SIECs conduct to entrench themselves and their political parties at the grass-roots level of governance through the sponsorship of their hand-picked lackeys. So doing, they are able to control the federal allocations to the Local Government Areas, LGAs.

The original intendment of creating these SIECs was to ensure that democracy was fostered at the state level by having a local Electoral Umpire perform the functions that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was also created to do. Though INEC is regularly criticised for pandering to the whims of the president and his political party, they sometimes produce elections that meet the democratic aspirations of the people, as we saw in 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2015. The same cannot be said for the SIECs.

The election results they typically produce have come to be predictable, and always to the advantage of the ruling Governor and his party. This is a travesty of democracy and absolute defeat of the purpose for which they were created.

It is such a shame, because in many of the advanced democracies that we copied from, such as the USA, there are no national Electoral Umpires that conduct elections. Elections are conducted by state-level bodies created for that purpose. The US Federal Election Commission never conducts elections. It is more concerned with campaign financing and mass participation. State Electoral Umpires conduct even the federal elections and announce their results.

Because of the SIECs’ sweeping failure, there are calls for the same embattled INEC to conduct local government elections using their State Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs. While this might help shore up the quality of outcomes, it is not ideal to unduly involve the Federal Government in the affairs of the grass-roots.

The independence of the SIEC can be improved by asking political parties and other independent stakeholders to nominate representatives into the SIEC boards. Unless something is done, the SIECs will continue to be the laughingstock of our democracy.